The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective — 5 Cultural and Social Scaffolds

Human possibility unfolds within structured relational environments: families, communities, institutions, and cultural traditions. These scaffolds channel, shape, and sometimes constrain the actualisation of potential, providing norms, routines, and expectations that guide action. Far from being neutral, these social frameworks are active participants in the becoming of each life.

Education, law, ritual, and professional practices operate as symbolic and relational mediators. They make certain potentials visible and attainable while leaving others obscured or inaccessible. Through these mediating structures, the individual is both empowered and constrained, navigating a complex lattice of relational affordances that determine the practical horizon of possibility.

Understanding the role of cultural and social scaffolds illuminates the co-constituted nature of human becoming. Possibility is not merely an internal attribute of the individual; it is distributed across relational networks, instantiated through engagement with shared symbolic and material structures. By tracing these scaffolds, we see how human lives are both shaped by and shape the worlds they inhabit.